


Skypiea, Night One

by east_wind



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, M/M, Missing Scene, Skypiea (One Piece)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 18:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/east_wind/pseuds/east_wind
Summary: They did get a single night of paradise, after all, before everything started to fall apart.
Relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 22
Kudos: 183





	Skypiea, Night One

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【索香】空岛，第一夜](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25984411) by [APTX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APTX/pseuds/APTX)

It took two tries to get his cigarette lit in the thin Sky Island air, and even then the light breeze on the balcony almost put it right back out. Sanji sighed, leaned his forearms against the railing. He was tired. The last time any of them had slept- it had been on the Merry in Mocktown, two full days and a night ago, and in that time they had done the nigh-impossible. Unlike the others, though, passed out all over their hosts’ living room, sleep had eluded him. He never slept well the first night in a new place anyway, and this place was way weirder than anything else they had encountered. Beautiful, but weird.

It didn’t help that Nami hadn’t returned on the waver.

He looked out at the horizon, hoping to see a faraway figure on her way back, but it was too dark to make much out besides the eddies of clouds. Any of them could have been the trail kicked up by a waver.

Sanji tensed slightly when he heard footsteps on the balcony behind him, but after a second he recognized the tread. “Can’t sleep?” His words drifted into the impossibly high dome of midnight-blue sky, floating towards stars which were farther away than they ever seemed from the ocean.

“You aren’t asleep either. Still looking for her?”

Sanji nodded.

“She’ll come back. She’s dumb, but she’s not stupid.” Zoro joined him at the railing, facing in towards the house.

Sanji rolled his eyes. “That sentence was plenty stupid.”

“Oh, you are worried about her- that was weak.”

“My efforts have to be earned. That one was below me.”

“Mhm.” Out of the corner of his eye Sanji could see Zoro’s grin. After a moment he turned around to join Sanji in looking out over the cloud sea. “She shouldn’t have gone out by herself.”

“Not on our first day here.”

“No.”

They watched the constant, infinitesimal shifting of cloud banks for a long time. There was no pattern to the motion, no indications of current or depth, wind or wave. And yet even without those cues Nami had learned to navigate the strange seas instantly.

“I don’t know,” Sanji said. “Maybe she is fine. Maybe she found out that she only _thought_ the sea was where she belonged. She loves the clouds more, is what I mean.”

“Hm. Luffy would never let her stay.”

“Would you? Would any of us?”

“Well,” Zoro countered, “what if one day we came across the All Blue? None of us would try to tear you away from it if you decided you wanted to stop there.”

Sanji was silent for a minute. He had never considered that the All Blue would be anywhere but at the end of their voyage. If they found it before Luffy took up his place as king of the pirates, would he let the crew go on without him?

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said at last.

“Sorry.” Zoro put an arm around his shoulders, drew him in a little closer. “Dinner was good tonight. I mean- it’s always good. This was different.”

“I know what you mean. Thanks.”

“How do you know?” Zoro asked. “When you’re in a room full of ingredients you’ve never even heard of, how do you know what works?”

“Well-” Sanji paused, thought about how to make sense of something that was as instinctual as walking. “Cooking- it’s a skill, just like anything else. And a skill doesn’t live out there.” He gestured to nowhere, just around. “You carry it and you adapt it to whatever situation you come across. It’s like-”

“-Fighting a total stranger.”

“Exactly.” Eerie, how they had started to understand each other like that. “It certainly helped tonight that I had a guide, but with enough time I could have put something together by myself. Even brand-new ingredients will just have slightly different combinations of the same old flavors. It’s just a matter of knowing how flavors work in general. Once you have that, you can work in any kind of new material. That was how I learned as a kid, when _everything_ was new.” He stopped himself there. It had been a big enough day without talking about his childhood. “How did you first learn to fight?”

“I don’t really remember. It was like what you said, I guess. Putting together a set of skills that you can use in a lot of situations. Sword fighting, though- it’s a lot more conditioning. You can’t just know in your head how to do it and expect to be able to do it. Your body has to be strong enough to live up to what you know.” It was his turn to pause for a moment. “I don’t think I had a real fight in my entire life until Mihawk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if I faced people before him who knew more than me, I was always just stronger, and that was enough to win. I fought people who hurt me, but no one could hurt me enough to stop me from hurting them. Mihawk, though- even if I was stronger than him in, I don’t know, arm wrestling-” Sanji couldn’t help but laugh at that image- “it would never be enough, because of just how much he knows. It was different from how all of the other fights in my life had worked. He could have defended himself against me with that stupid knife forever because it was like it was a part of him. His knowledge and his strength weren’t just working together. They were the same thing. And that’s where I need to be.”

Sanji thought about that fight, watching a legend and a stranger duel on the wreckage in front of the Baratie on one of the weirdest days of his life. There was no denying that Mihawk had held a supreme advantage. Watching him hold off three swords with a pocketknife had been alarming, and it had been, in retrospect, a taste of the way the world changed on the Grand Line: the impossible became, suddenly, the commonplace. “But you have something he doesn’t,” Sanji said aloud.

“Really?” Sanji could hear genuine surprise in Zoro’s voice.

“He isn’t working towards anything. What does he have now? All this skill, but now he’s stuck. You have a purpose. That’s your edge.”

“Mhm?”

"Okay, look- think about Luffy and Crocodile. Crocodile had years of experience, a tactical advantage in that he was a mean son of a bitch- but Luffy beat him anyway. Because Crocodile thought he was at the top of the heap. You fight a lot harder when you’re looking up, I guess.”

“If that’s true,” Zoro said, finally, “will I be like that? When I beat Mihawk?”

“Hm. Maybe if all you really are is a walking, talking scabbard. But you aren’t, because there’s actually two things you have that Mihawk doesn’t. The rest of us will still be there. Mihawk, Crocodile- they don’t have anyone. Friends give you something to work for besides being the best.”

Zoro laughed. “I always knew you were a sap.”

“Oh, shut up. Some of us spend time thinking about stuff besides swords, it really gives you time to have emotional insights-”

“I think about other stuff-”

“Prove it,” Sanji said, and he looked up just in time for Zoro to lean down and kiss him.

“I thought about _that_.”

Sanji blinked, stunned.

“Gotcha,” Zoro said.

“I oughta kick that stupid grin off your face, you know that?”

“I’d like to see you try-”

“Oh, if we weren’t guests here, your ass would be over this rail already, falling right into-”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Sanji stepped on his foot. “Are you done being irritating? Because I’ve only been waiting for you to make up your mind about me for about _six weeks_-”

“Poor you. You know, you could have given _me_ more of a sign-”

“Oh, for- come here.” Sanji kissed him once- “That’s for earning a bounty, even though they should have picked me first-” twice- “That’s for saying dinner is always good-” a third time- “That’s for proving that you don’t just think about swords.”

“I cannot believe,” Zoro said, almost into Sanji’s mouth, “that you can be this obnoxious even when you’re kissing me.”

“You picked this,” Sanji pointed out.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did."

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE shoutout to Steph for being my best and my favorite audience, and to Saint for pushing me to post this!!! I love you both :D


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